


Nature vs. Nuture

by nirejseki



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Child Abuse, F/M, Gen, Lewis Snart's A+ Parenting, M/M, Screw Destiny
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-23
Updated: 2016-04-24
Packaged: 2018-06-04 01:49:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6636085
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nirejseki/pseuds/nirejseki
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Writing prompt: One of Kendra's previous incarnations turns out to be Len's mother.</p>
<p>Warnings: Len's childhood, my endless disdain for the concept of predetermined destiny, and a little bit of annoyance at the writers for having Kendra be unable to make up her mind about Ray and Carter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Len doesn’t have many pictures of himself as a kid, for obvious reasons. 

Mick’s been to his house, though – broke in once after a frantic call from Lisa – and there’s one picture of his mom and dad pinned up in a dusty corner. So Mick knows why Len goes quiet and tight-lipped when he manages to tear his eyes away from the time-travelling space ship and sees the young woman who introduces herself as Kendra Saunders. 

When they’re back at the safe house, Mick reviews his gun in silence as Len flips through a magazine, tension apparent in ever line of his body. After a decent half hour of silence for Len to unwind a little, Mick decides to broach the subject.

“So she wasn’t psychotic,” he says.

“She was definitely psychotic,” Len replies grimly, answering so quickly that Mick knows that he’s been dwelling on the subject since he saw her. “She just wasn’t entirely wrong about the reincarnation thing. Apparently.”

Mick nods. This conversation is hurting Len, deep inside where there’s nothing Mick can do, but it’s better to have it out than let Len take it like yet another a stab to the gut that’ll never heal. She doesn’t get any more of that from him.

“Want me to burn her?” he asks, entirely serious.

Len bits his lip. “No,” he finally says. “It’s not this Kendra Saunders’ fault. Even if she is the same person. Was the same person, whatever.”

“So, you wanna go on this mission?” 

“What do you want to do?” Len replies, avoiding the question. But Mick knows better; a chance to get to know the mother that abandoned him to his father when he was small and helpless, to see her from an adult perspective, to maybe get some insight into the hows and whys that tormented his childhood. How could he resist?

“Boss,” Mick says patiently. 

“I’m too close to the subject,” he says determinedly. “Too emotional. She’s my– no. You make the call.”

Mick looks at him for a long moment. “Do you want to go on this mission, Lenny?”

Len hisses a little then goes quiet for a long moment, thinking about it. “Yeah,” he says eventually. “Yeah, I want to go.”

“Then we go,” Mick replies. “Simple as that.” He thinks about it for a second, and frowns. “What’d we gonna say if they ask why we’re coming?”

Len smiled a little. “We wanted a chance to steal the Mona Lisa?” he jokes.

Mick rolls his eyes.

—————–

It all goes to hell very quickly, of course. 

The very first person they go look up turns out to be a child of Kendra and Carter, some old guy named Aldus Boardman, and she immediately comes across all maternal. All “my son” this, “our son” that. All the wailing and gnashing of teeth when he dies. 

Len goes even quieter, even colder. When it turns out that they were picked up to be cannon fodder due to their irrelevance to the timeline, he and Mick share a look of disdain at the others’ existential crises. Good thing their motives are entirely distinct from fame and do-gooder style acclaim.

Of course, Len screws that up, too. He never was very good at staying un-invested. That’s how he ended up planning all his own jobs – he couldn’t stand seeing people do it wrong, so he offered suggestions and edits until they yielded and let him do it better. It didn’t help that he really wanted to hurt Savage for beating on Mick in that first job in the 70s. 

It’s ironic, really, that after managing to keep a lid on it for months, at this point, it’s Mick – Kronos, really – who ends up spilling the beans. Len was content just avoiding the living daylights out of Kendra, who seems to be a pleasant, if somewhat indecisive woman. He’s not getting any of the answers he wants from her. But when she goes to try to “reach” Mick or whatever the hell she was trying to do, Mick laughs in her face.

“Lady, you got no grounds to judge _me_ ,” he tells her. 

“You were there from the beginning. You knew me, you knew what he was to me,” she said stiffly. “You killed my _son_ anyway.”

“Oh, yes, you care so much about your son, who you only knew for…what was it, a day? A few hours?” he mocked. “What about your other kids? Do they not count or something?”

She was taken aback. “What other kids?” she asked. 

Mick just laughs at her again, turns his back on her. 

She doesn’t figure it out immediately, but Len knows that from that point on, it’s inevitable.

———-

It happens after their sojourn to the old West. 

Kendra is fretting – loudly – about what her past self had told her about her relationship. It’s amazing that Ray hasn’t found out about it yet given how much she’s been retreading the same topic; Len suspects intense amounts of denial are involved. 

It’s incredibly stupid anyway; weren’t she and Carter doomed to be murdered by Savage in each incarnation that they ended up together? How was that any less of a tragedy than what happened when she dated someone else? Did Kendra actually conceptualize the fact that all relationships eventually end in some form of tragedy, unless you conveniently die in a massive meteor strike that eliminates you and all of your loved ones simultaneously and painlessly in a single blast? (Len had always assumed he and Mick would go at the same time, probably in a fire, and Lisa would continue on her way, which he thought was even better since she’d be able to handle it.)

Maybe it was the reincarnation that was messing with Kendra’s understanding of “take what you’ve got and run with it”. 

Either way, she’s on her whatever-number iteration of the same old spiel, rambling to Sara – who is being much more patient than Len would be – while Len and Mick work on technical projects on opposite sides of the room from each other, when finally Len loses his patience with her rambling.

“– I just don’t know, my past self seemed so _sure_ about –” 

“Your past self has literally no impact on you or your decision right now,” Len interrupts, not looking up. “Nature versus nurture, maybe you’ve heard about it? Just because your past self had no luck and decided to extrapolate that into a rule doesn’t mean she was right.”

Kendra turns at him, glaring. “There’s no need to be so condescending,” she snaps. “You have no idea what I’m going through now.”

Mick barks a laugh. “You have no idea how lucky you are that he actually believes all that crap about you being a different person each time,” he says. “Or he would have agreed to let me kill you when we first saw you.”

Len glares at Mick. Just because they’re on the outs doesn’t mean Mick should go airing his secrets, though clearly Mick feels differently on the subject.

“You wanted to kill me the first time we met?” Kendra said, clearly taken aback. “I didn’t even know you!”

Sara’s frowning, too. “Wait,” she says slowly. “ _Did_ you know Kendra before? As a…previous version of herself?”

“No comment,” Len drawls, his voice tight.

“Gideon,” Kendra says. “Please run a search through Snart’s timeline for previous reincarnations of me and let me know what you find.”

Len does the worst possible thing and freezes, staying quiet just a second too long and not managing to countermand the order before Gideon processes it. 

A picture of what is clearly an older version of Kendra with a different haircut, grabbed from some old Polaroid, pops up on the monitor. “Your previous incarnation immediately before your current one was as Carolyn Snart,” Gideon says in her eternally cheerful voice. “The mother of Leonard and Lisa Snart.”

You could probably hear a pin drop.

“Thank you, Gideon,” Len finally says. 

“Your _mother_?” Sara says faintly.

“That’s why Mick was talking about me not caring about my other kids,” Kendra whispers, staring at Len, her face pale. “He was referring to you.”

“And his sister,” Mick adds snidely. “Kids is plural.”

“ _Thank you_ , Mick,” Len says, grinding his teeth together. “This is not a useful subject of conversation.”

“Not _useful_? I’m your _mother_!”

“You are _not_ my mother,” Len says stiffly. “If you were, we’d have something to talk about. Someone who looks a lot like you was my mother; I’m not going to hold you to any responsibility just because she was someone who could have, _but didn’t_ , grow up into being you.”

“Hold me to – you didn’t think this was something I needed to know about?” Kendra looks indignant. “It’s _my life_ too. I had the right to know something this important – and that explains why you’ve always avoided me, doesn’t it? Is that why you came on this trip?”

Len shrugs. “I wanted to know more about her and I thought I might be able to learn about it from you,” he says honestly. “Not the case, so I moved on.”

“Why didn’t you just _tell me_?”

“What good would that have done? It would have just made things awkward.” He gives Mick another glare. “A bit like it is now, come to think of it.”

“But I was your mother,” Kendra just repeats, looking stunned. “Your _mother_.”

Len snaps.

“You were a _terrible_ mother,” he snarls, all the old pain and anger rising up the surface with a vengeance. “You were drunk all the time, and when you weren’t drunk you were usually high on something you’d found to shoot up with. You survived the death of whoever the hell Carter was in that lifetime and you blamed yourself for it, so you hooked up with an abusive asshole so you could punish yourself for it every day and then you stuck around to punish yourself for marrying him, and you didn’t give a _damn_ about the fact that he was beating the crap out of me and Lisa too. I threw out your stash of heroin by accident one time and you punched me in the face. I was _six_. And that doesn’t even start with what you tried to do to Lisa.”

Kendra is silent and pale and horrified, but Len finds he just can’t stop.

“You tried to smother her in her crib, you know that?” he says savagely. “Post-partum psychosis, I think that’s what it’s called nowadays. You were high as fuck and you kept saying that you shouldn’t have had kids with someone who wasn’t _him_ , that you were _betraying his memory_. You never said a name, but we all knew about it – especially Dad, and don’t you think that made him happy? And then when it was starting to get really bad, you just left one day so you could go _die_ , talking about how you were going to meet him in the next life. We thought you were _nuts_. Everyone thought you were nuts; all the kids at school, all of our neighbors, everyone knew we were the kids of a fucking psycho junkie. You are _not_ the same person as my mother, because if you were I would have killed you myself, and don’t think I wouldn’t just because we’re blood, _I murdered my dad_. You had a different life then so you were a different person; you have a different life now. Accept it and be done with it.”

“I-I-I’m so sorry…” she starts haltingly.

“Don’t be sorry,” he cuts her off sharply. “As I said, it wasn’t you. Just get the hell over yourself. Hook up with Ray. Forgive Mick for what he did as Kronos.”

“Forgive…but he killed my son!” she protests automatically, then flinches as she realizes what she’s said.

“Oh, yeah,” Len mocks. “Your _son_. How could I forget. Your _son_. The one you had with _Carter_ , you mean, or Joe or whatever his name was at the time. The one you knew all of two hours, right? Mourn the man you met and never got to know, sure, but don’t give me that crap about mourning your son, not unless you want to take credit for me, too. You really want to apologize to me for fucking up my life, _Kendra_? You want my forgiveness? Or do you just want to make yourself feel better about it? Because I’ve named my price. Pay it or don’t, but pick one. You wanna own all your previous lives, kids and mandatory destiny with Carter and everything? Fine. Tell me now, and we’ll go. You and me. Right now.”

Kendra clearly doesn’t understand what he means, but Sara looks at him sharply. Mick puts a quelling hand on her elbow; he knows Len isn’t likely to actually haul off and murder Kendra, who Len really doesn’t think did anything worse than be a barista with an unfortunate choice in past lives. 

Kendra’s eyes are filled with tears. “Okay,” she whispers. “Okay. I’ll…I’ll…I need to go.” She runs out of the room.

Sara looks at Len mutely for a minute, clearly not sure how to react to this, before turning and following Kendra out the door, leaving Len and Mick alone.

Len’s still breathing hard, hand clenched on the cold gun’s hilt. 

After a few minutes, Mick shifts a little in his chair.

“Thanks.”

Len glanced at him before looking down. “Don’t you what you’re thanking me for.”

“You don’t give a damn if Kendra ends up with Ray or not,” Mick says. “So what you were really after was her getting over what happened when I was Kronos.”

Len shrugs. “You can’t be on a team with someone who wants you dead,” he says, echoing something he’s said plenty of times before. “Even if they aren’t the type of actually kill you, you can’t have them hesitating when you’re counting on them.”

“Still on the team, am I?” Mick says dispassionately.

Len stares at the gun in his hands. “Always,” he says. “Even when we fuck it up.”

Mick grunted. “I think the word you’re looking for,” he says. “Is _especially. Especially_ when you fuck up.”

Len’s mouth twitched as he buried old childish anger and pain under the repairing of a newer pain. He knew which one was more important to who he was now. 

“Fine. _Especially_ when I fuck up.”

“Knew you’d admit it eventually.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Several people requested a follow-up where Sara and Kendra talk about it and Kendra deals with kidnapping baby Len in Episode 1.12 - so here you go!

Sara followed Kendra to the other room. Kendra was pacing back and forth frantically, so Sara just plopped herself down on the bed and pulled her knees up, wrapping her arms around them as she waited for Kendra to start talking. If it’d been her, she would have offered a nice sparring session to get it out of her system, hit things really hard for a while, but Kendra…even when they were fighting, Kendra was always talking. Also, putting a weapon in Kendra’s hands right now seemed like a recipe for disaster and blood-lust rage.

So Snart was Kendra’s kid. Past-Kendra’s kid. Sara still had no idea what to do with that. Honestly, Snart was so slick, so self-contained, even when he was torturing himself over his relationship with his partner, she’d just assumed he’d always been like that. Sure, Jax had said something one time about Snart trying to change some sob story backstory, but it just didn’t seem to jibe with his personality so she’d dismissed it.

This changed things with Snart, didn’t it? She wasn’t sure if it did. But with Kendra…

“He’s got to be lying,” Kendra said abruptly.

Sara sighed and put her chin between her pulled-up knees. Looks like they were going through this the long way, then.

“Gideon confirmed you were his mother,” she said patiently. “Gideon has no reason to lie, and Rip wouldn’t let Snart make adjustments in Gideon’s system even if he could figure out how.”

Kendra crossed her arms stubbornly. “There’s got to be some mistake,” she insists, but doubt is creeping into her tone. Whatever rationalization she’d come up with to reach her conclusion hadn’t really faced the test of logic.

“Gideon,” Sara said quietly, still watching Kendra like she would a wild hawk. “Please reconfirm the identity of Kendra’s prior incarnation to this one, with particular emphasis on any children she might have had.”

“Certainly,” Gideon chirped. “Ms. Saunders’ prior incarnation was born as Carolyn Williams, becoming Carolyn Snart when she married Lewis Snart at the age of twenty-two. She is the mother of two children, Leonard and Lisa Snart–”

“Are we sure about that?” Kendra asked. “It couldn’t have just been…I don’t know, some sort of hospital mistake?”

Sara gave her an incredulous look. That was definitely grasping at straws.

“Carolyn Snart is listed on the birth records of both children and was admitted to the hospital at the correct time,” Gideon reported. “A scan of the visual record in the vicinity of the hospital at the time confirms that her appearance matches that of Ms. Saunders.”

Kendra sat down, hard. She put her head her hands and inhaled hard, almost sobbing with it. Sara put a hand lightly on her shoulder, trying to offer what comfort she could.

After a few minutes, Kendra raised her head a little, eyes lost. “He said I was a terrible mother,” she whispered. 

Sara nodded mutely. That part had hurt to hear, and not just because she had trouble imaging Snart going through that. No one should have to endure that. Learning you were the sort of person capable of meting something like that out on an innocent kid, your _own kid_ – that was tough, too. Like learning that you have what it takes to murder a man in cold blood. Sara remembered; she remembered needing to look in the mirror, to re-arrange what she had _thought_ were the pieces that made up who she was to account for this new information. There had been no space in the old Sara for that information, that knowledge – so she’d had to become someone new. Kendra had a tough time ahead of her, having to do it with every new past incarnation she learned about, but this one was going to be even harder to swallow than the one from the Wild West. 

Life was easier if you could reduce it to nothing more than a storybook romance, regardless of whether that story was a tragedy or a comedy. Life came with a lot more than that. 

“He said…” Kendra started, then stalled out again. “I didn’t think I would ever be the sort of person to do that,” she said sadly. Then she looked up again, eyes glinting in determination once more. “I _don’t_ think I’m the sort of person to do that. Snart said a lot of things, but he said I died when he was a kid, right? And Gideon’s only ever confirmed that I was his mother, not anything else he said. We knew his dad…you heard what Jax said about what Snart said about being a kid, how his dad used to…well, you know. Maybe he was mixing us up.”

Sara made a little face. “Kendra…I know it’s easier to think that…” she started.

“But why _not_?” Kendra cried. “I don’t _feel_ like someone who could do that, not ever. That’s not who I am. That’s not who I’d ever become. I don’t see why I should – why I should listen to some, some _criminal_ tell stories that we have _no way_ to ever confirm.”

“That’s not true, Kendra,” Sara said, not wanting to cause her friend more pain but unwilling to let her dig herself deeper into her pit of pain, lashing out at Snart because she couldn’t face the truth. “First, you know Snart. He might be a criminal, but he’s a good guy. A good teammate. He’s not just some random criminal who’d lie to you to make you feel bad, you _know_ that. Second…” Sara hesitated. “Kendra, my dad was a cop, okay? I’ve seen him work these sorts of cases. Domestic violence doesn’t exclusively happen in private where no one can see. There’s usually a paper trail. Domestic disturbance calls, hospital visits, child services, reports from the school…if you add in drug abuse, there’s probably arrest warrants, arraignments, trials, maybe rehab. You need proof, it’s probably out there – but _don’t_ ,” she raised her hands to cut off Kendra’s immediate move to talk. “ _Don’t_ ask for them. That’s Snart’s private history there. And if it’s true, it’s nothing you want to see.”

Kendra looked grim. “It’s not just Snart’s private history,” she said. “It’s mine, too. Gideon, I want to see…what did you say there was?”

Sara sighed. “Gideon, please check to see if there are any reports from child services, police records or hospital visits during the period when Lewis Snart was incarcerated.” 

“I will check now.”

“That’s a good idea,” Kendra said, nodding. “If all the reports are from when he’s around and none when he wasn’t, we’d know that Snart’s full of shit.” 

“And if there are?” Sara asked.

Kendra faltered, then crossed her arms. “There _won’t_ be any. Right, Gideon?”

“I’m sorry, Ms. Saunders,” Gideon said. “There are three reports from Child Services listed as occurring during the first two years of this period.”

All the blood drained out of Kendra’s face and she looked sick to her stomach.

“The first one details an incident where the then-Mrs. Snart engaged in a loud altercation with her son, then aged five, in a public restaurant resulting in her dragging the young Mr. Snart out by his wrist. This caused several reports to come in from concerned citizens and resulted in a visit from the authorities,” Gideon continued with ruthless computer precision. “The second one results from a series of hospital visits by Mr. Snart over the course of two months at age six, starting with a bleeding nose which was discovered not to be broken, reportedly from an overactive game of tag; a burn on his arm, reported to be from an attempt to cook pasta; a dislocated shoulder, also attributed to a game; and a mild case of hypothermia. In that case, Mr. Snart informed the nurse that he had locked himself out of the house during a cold winter night without a jacket or shoes and was unable to rouse his mother for assistance in re-entering. He appears to have walked to the emergency room himself.”

“And the third one?” Kendra asked, voice shaking.

“Approximately one month before the senior Mr. Snart was due to be released from prison, it appears the younger Mr. Snart attempted to run away from home, which resulted in another report. That incident occurred towards the end of the third year of Mr. Snart’s incarceration, but appears to have been back-dated to an earlier date.”

“I’m a terrible mother,” Kendra moaned. “I’m an abusive _piece of shit_ , that’s me. Oh god…” She buried her head into her hands again, her shoulder starting to shake. 

“Why were none of these followed up on?” Sara asked, scowling a little. “That hospital sequence is pretty damning; CPS could totally make a case for child endangerment with that, get him out of the house.”

“All of the reports were marked as fully resolved within days of being filed without any follow-up visits, which represents an extraordinarily quick timeline for resolution given the number of reports,” Gideon replied. “There is no reason listed, but it may be due to the fact that prior to his arrest, Mr. Snart was employed as a policeman. He is listed as continuing to associate with other members of the CCPD after his early release from prison. This may also be the reason that there are no other CPS reports officially on file outside of this period, although a number appear to have been drafted.”

Sara’s fists clenched. There was little her dad hated more than corrupt cops, and she was definitely starting to see why.

“Would you like me to continue to search through the records of this period?” Gideon asked, voice as cheerful and impassive as ever.

“No, thank you, Gideon,” Sara said as Kendra continued to sob. “I think we’ve learned enough.”

She wrapped her arms around Kendra and held her silently.

\-------------------------------

Kendra laid in the bed in her old room, staring dully up at the ceiling. She’d sent Sara to tell Ray that she wasn’t feeling well, that she needed to be by herself tonight. Normally he made her feel better about everything, the way he smiled, the way he took everything lightly, like a joke that they shared against the world. She couldn’t bear to taint that endless optimism with how she was feeling right now.

Tainted. That was a good word for it.

She’d searched her heart and her memory as strongly as she could, but she couldn’t remember Snart or his mysterious sister. There were no memories of them, no flashbacks, nothing. Had they meant so little to her past self? How could she _do that_ to her children, to _any_ child? What sort of monster was she?

And did it mean that she was that sort of monster now? Ray would want children if they stayed together, she knew that; he’d always been great with the neighbors’ kids whenever they came into their yard, had grinned that carefree grin at them and shot her thoughtful looks when he thought she wasn’t looking. Was it all there inside of her, just waiting for a chance at someone too vulnerable to fight back? Could she ever risk that it was?

There was none of that immediate recognition that there had been with Aldus. He’d felt like her child, hers and Carter’s; something deep in her gut had been happy to see him, even if he was plenty older than she was. 

Snart was older than she was, too.

Maybe Snart was right; maybe she only cared about the children she’d had with Carter. Was this what her past self had meant, that she was doomed to tragedy if she tried to move on without him?

Or maybe it was that Carter had been there, the first time they had met Aldus. He had told her that he remembered all of their prior lives, all but the first. When Carter was around, she felt swept away by the grandeur and the glory of it, their epic love story stretching through the ages; she hadn’t really felt comfortable with the man himself, not yet, but she’d been content in knowing that it was just a matter of time. He told her stories of their past and she’d felt like she was there, even if she didn’t remember it herself.

She hadn’t actually _remembered_ Aldus until they had gone after Per Degaton in 2147, now that she thought of it. She’d had the flashbacks to him at that time, those little snapshots of a life lived long ago. She hadn’t had that when they’d first met Aldus. It had just felt right, like a piece of her history, just like it always did when Carter was around. 

Who was she, without Carter? Could she ever be complete without him? Was it fair to Ray that she condemn him to a life of tragedy that he could avoid if he went on without her? Was it fair to her to use him like that, as some sort of stop-gap measure, even if she really loved him? Was she doomed to live alone now that Carter was gone, just like her old self has said?

There was a knock on her door. A moment later, Sara let herself in.

Kendra looked at her. “Yeah?” she croaked, her throat hoarse with tears, lifting herself up on her elbows.

“How does it feel like, when you get your memories back?” Sara asked, looking like she’d also been up half the night, worrying over Kendra’s issues. Sara was a good friend. This whole trip was worth it, if it meant she found people like Ray and Sara. 

“What do you mean?”

“What does it _feel_ like?” Sara asked. “When I was with the League, it felt like my old life just faded away like an old photograph, but when I came back with you guys, it felt like they burst back into full color. I suddenly remembered who that person was, the one who did all those things; I knew that I was capable of more than the person who I was with the League. Is that what it’s like for you?”

Kendra thought about it. “No,” she said slowly. “It’s not like that. It’s more like…I don’t know, watching a movie, except it’s me doing all the things. I can see Carter there, I can see Aldus there, but I’m not making the decisions, I’m just watching.”

“So it’s more like a waking dream than a memory? It’s not at all like you remember, I don’t know, having breakfast yesterday?”

Yesterday at breakfast, Ray had declared he was going to try to make eggs instead of just ordering them from Gideon. Gideon had resisted. He’d kept the argument going a lot longer than he had been serious about it, because it was making Kendra laugh until her eyes teared up. 

“No, it’s nothing like that,” she said. “I don’t know. It’s not quite as immediate, you know? I know it’s me, but at the same time…”

Sara sat by her in the bed. “What about your memories from when you were a little kid? Is it like that?” 

“What do you mean?”

Sara looked a little embarrassed. “Okay, let me give you an example. When I was about six, maybe seven, I’m not quite sure, but my dad gave me a stuffed pony. And I was _nuts_ about horses back then –”

“Me too,” Kendra said, small watery smile breaking through. “I think the obligatory horse-crazy period was, like, a rite of passage of our generation of girls. You know: My Little Pony, Black Beauty –”

“Oh, god, do _not_ talk to me about Black Beauty,” Sara moaned. “I _remember_ that, god, I don’t even want to think about how many times I watched that movie. But that’s sort of my point – I was so obsessed with horses, and god, I talked to that stuffed pony _all the time_. I took her with me everywhere I went. I introduced her to people. I _buckled her seatbelt_.”

Kendra laughed a little, a bit confused as to where this was going, but loving the imagery.

“But you see, I know that I did all that,” Sara said. “But I have _no idea_ why. I mean, I loved that pony – her name was Misty, don’t get me started – but I don’t remember why it was so important to me or why I called 411 one time to find out where I could get a bale of hay to feed her. I’m just…I’m not that girl any more, you know? Maybe it’s just not being a kid anymore, but it’s more than that. I don’t _fit_ into that skin any more. I’m still me, but I’m _more_ than I was at that age. I couldn’t go back if I wanted to.”

Kendra nodded slowly. “It is a bit like that,” she said thoughtfully. “I mean, I can usually figure out why I did something in a past life, I get what I was feeling, it’s not like I totally don’t understand it –”

“But it’s filtered by who you are now,” Sara said triumphantly. “Who you are now makes you feel differently about things. Kendra, what do you think about slavery?”

“What?” Kendra said, taken aback. “That’s a pretty big non-sequitur.”

“Seriously, Kendra, just go with it. Slavery: what do you think?”

“It’s awful,” Kendra said gamely. “ _Obviously_. No offense, Sara, but I _am_ a black woman in America. Uh, 2016 America. Trust me, my parents made sure the lessons about the civil rights era and slavery stuck in my head, and what they didn’t do, the public school system definitely did.”

Sara nodded, looking pleased with herself. “But if I read my history right, slavery was _prevalent_ across the ancient world,” she said, bouncing in place a little. “I know you don’t have memories from most of your life, but you _do_ have memories from your first life, right? If you were a noble Egyptian priestess, wouldn’t you have had slaves?”

Kendra thought back, concentrating hard. She’d never thought about it; there hadn’t been any slaves in any of the flashbacks she’d had so far – no. No, that wasn’t true. Now that she thought about it, now that she _looked_ at each memory, separated from the feelings and the presence of Carter, there were people in each memory, hanging around in the background. Slaves, ready to come forward at a gesture, offering her something to drink, moving her pillow to be more comfortable. They’d always been there, but her past self didn’t see them, didn’t think about them. They were no more notable than the furniture, which is why she hadn’t thought about them before, even though they’d been there.

Kendra screwed up her face. Oh god, she’d owned slaves, she was a _slave-owner_. That was just _wrong_.

“It is just wrong,” Sara said eagerly, echoing the words Kendra had unknowingly spoken aloud. “It’s wrong to you _now_. Because Snart’s right – you’re not the same person you were way back then. You grew up in 1990s America, age of the after-school special, not in ancient Egypt – you _couldn’t_ have grown up to be the same person you were in ancient Egypt, raised when and where you were. It was never an option.”

“What does that _mean_ , though? I’m just a bad childhood away from being a slave-owning, child-beating monster?”

Sara gave her a look. “If you think about it that way, aren’t we all?” she asked. “We’re on our way to rescue Mick Rory from the fire that killed his parents; you think he’d be the same person he is now if that hadn’t happened? You think I’d be the monster I am now, if I hadn’t gotten on that yacht with Oliver?”

“You’re not a monster,” Kendra said automatically. 

“And neither are you,” Sara replied. “Being a slave-owner was not monstrous by ancient Egypt standards. And your incarnation as Snart’s mom…” she paused for a second, trying to find the words. “We don’t know what she went through,” she finally said. “You don’t know. Maybe you have it in you to be that person, but when I was twelve, I didn’t think I’d ever be able to kill a man and not think about it twice. Turns out I am. But Kendra, you’ve been telling me since we started this mission that killing people isn’t all I am. I’m more than what life has taught me to be. Your past self, she screwed up. She screwed up _bad_ ; I’m not going to lie, you don’t get forgiven for hurting kids like that. But that’s not _you_. You didn’t have the life, you didn’t have those experiences, you didn’t become that person.”

“I don’t know –”

“Kendra. Say it: _she is not you_.”

“She’s not me,” Kendra said slowly. 

“Just keep saying that till you believe it, okay?” Sara said, patting her hand. “Not you.”

Kendra nodded and sank back into her bed.

_She’s not me. I’m not her._

But what did that mean?

\----------------------------

They ended up going after various team members’ past selves as babies. Kendra kept quiet when Rip handed out assignments – looks like he either didn’t know about who she had been in that time period or he didn’t think the risk of her meeting her past self was a problem, but she wasn’t going to risk him taking her off the team for this one. She _needed_ to be the one to go after Snart.

If Snart was a newborn in the hospital, his mother couldn’t be far away.

It turned out that Snart was _adorable_ as a baby. Kendra had seen babies before, but he was _so cute_. All chubby cheeks, weakly waving hands, and unfocused eyes. None of that wrinkly red-faced bawling that she’d previously associated with images of newborns from TV; he was clean and pretty sweet-looking. _So cute_.

How could anyone hurt someone like that?

She stops one of the real maternity ward nurses. “Hey, can you let me know what room the Snart family is in?” she asked, hoisting up baby Snart as a reason.

“I can only give you a few minutes,” Sara warned after they left the nurse behind. “We linger too long, Rip’ll start wondering where we are. Worse, we risk the Pilgrim coming in here and shooting the place up.”

“I’ll be quick,” Kendra promised, handing Sara the baby and slipping down the hallway. 

Lewis Snart was nowhere in evidence when she got there, but _she_ was there. Carolyn Snart. She looked terrible – bloodshot eyes and matted hair and deep sunken circles under her eyes. Of course, she _had_ just given birth in the last few days. Possibly hours.

“Pardon me,” Kendra said.

Carolyn looked at her dully. “What do you want?” she said, lips tightening with annoyance. “I already told you people I didn’t want to see him right now.”

“Um,” Kendra said. “Do you mean your husband or the baby?”

“Either,” Carolyn says, turning away. “I just want some sleep; is that too much to ask?”

“I just wanted to –”

“I really don’t care,” Carolyn snapped, still facing away from Kendra. “I don’t care what you want, if you have any questions or any stupid shit like that. Go and get me some more painkillers; you can at least be useful if you’re going to be here.”

“God,” Kendra said, disgusted. “You really are a junkie, aren’t you?”

Carolyn turned back to her, glaring now. “Yeah, I am. So what? Where do you get off your high horse, judging me for stuff you’ll _never_ understand? My mom was a junkie, too, and probably her mom before her. I had a way out of that type of life, once, someone who knew me and loved me and was going to get me out of there, and then he was murdered _right in front of me_ by some psycho.”

“Carter,” Kendra said, stricken.

“What?” 

“Nothing,” Kendra said hastily. “How long did you know him? This…person you loved?”

Carolyn glared at her balefully. Her pupils were heavily dilated. She’d clearly already asked for painkillers more than a few times before the time she’d asked Kendra. Kendra didn’t expect that she’d remember this conversation.

“He was everything to me from the age of eleven,” Carolyn said, pain evident in her voice. She suddenly looked so young, so lost. “He was three years younger than me, from a rich family; he was going to take me away the second he turned eighteen and his parents couldn’t stop him any longer. We knew from when we met that we were meant to be; he was…you wouldn’t understand what we were to each other, but we _knew_. We were _destined_. And then he died three days before his eighteenth birthday.”

“I do understand,” Kendra said quietly, suddenly struck with the realization that this incarnation of her, for all that it was in the past, was actually _younger_ than Kendra was now. God, she couldn’t be far past college age, if that. Kendra’d been pretty dumb in college. “More than you’d think. But, the man you’re married to now…”

“What, _Lewis_?” Carolyn said scornfully. “He’s an asshole and he probably only married me because he knocked me up, but at least he takes care of me. That’s all I can expect now, isn’t it? Raising some little piece of crap with Lewis’ face when I _should_ be holding Marcus’ son in my arms.”

“It’s not his fault for that,” Kendra hissed. 

Carolyn flipped her off. “Get out of here,” she sneered. “You’re not even a real nurse, are you? You’re not doing anything nurse-like. _Nurse!_ ”

Kendra turned on her heel and left.

Sara look one look at her face and winced. “It didn’t help, did it?”

“I’m not that woman,” Kendra said, and was abruptly surprised to find that she believed it. Her past self in the old West – that woman had been old, in her sixties. Kendra could see herself growing into that woman. But Carolyn? Kendra was older than Carolyn. She’d _passed_ that age. Maybe it was because of her parents, maybe it was because of where and when she’d been born, but she wasn’t that woman that she’d left behind in that room, sunk in her addiction and her obviously un-diagnosed depression and her memories of Marcus. She would never become that woman, not in this lifetime. And if she wasn’t going to become Carolyn, there was every likelihood she wouldn’t become Cinnamon either. “I’m not any of them,” Kendra said, eyes slowly going wide. “God. I’m _not them_. I’m _me_.”

Sara grinned at her. “Now you’re getting it.”

Kendra laughed, feeling a hundred years – a thousand years – _four thousand years_ – lighter. She could do this. She could be herself. She could try to forge something new with Snart – no, with _Leonard_. Something based in _this_ life, not on her past life. She could forgive Rory for killing Aldus, who she felt that immediate sense of connection with, who she had loved even if only for a few hours; she’d mourn Aldus for the rest of her life, but if she could forgive Sara for selling them out to the League and trying to duel her to the death after only two years back with the League, she could forgive Rory for what he’d done after god knows how long under the Time Masters’ thumb.

She could be with Ray. God, she could be with Ray, who wasn’t driven to be with her by memories of her past selves, who stuck around because he wanted to, who wanted nothing more than make her happy. No past lives, no baggage, no expectations, no great fate looming over her head like the sword of Damocles. _She could be with Ray._

“I think I see the Pilgrim coming through the side entrance,” Sara said, peeping over a counter at the security camera system. “Kendra, can you take baby Snart out the window instead?”

“Can do,” Kendra said, and spread her wings wide.

As she flew out of the third-story window, she heard the guard at the front entrance, who Snart had been distracting so that she and Sara could slip out unnoticed, yell out in shock. 

“Holy crap! Did you see that?” the man said. “Is that a _bird_?”

“Actually,” Snart drawled. “It’s a plane. No, wait –”

Kendra burst into giggles as she caught a thermal and soared up, up and away.

Snart might’ve had a shitty mother, but he also had a _great_ sense of humor. She was really going to have to get to know him better. 

There _had_ to be some way to make some sort of horrible pun about motherhood in his vicinity. 

Kendra thought he’d appreciate it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kendra says things when she's upset that she doesn't necessarily mean, as does Carolyn (who DID just give birth and is also very high). I don't pretend to have a great understanding of how child services works or how addicts behave (particularly very, very traumatized ones like Carolyn is here), nor am I trying to say that addicts/domestic abusers/etc. are all that way because of their childhoods. There's no one reason Carolyn turned out the way she did, and she's not necessarily like this all the time.


End file.
